Ada Lovelace
by jellyjay
Summary: He finds her behind a dumpster. [Established Aruani college AU where Armin finds a cat].
1. Prologue

_Prologue_

x

Armin finds her behind a dumpster.

It's raining. His umbrella is broken and he's soaked to the bone. He'd spilt coffee on his project book earlier and his Ethics Clearance application for this semester's thesis has been held up – all up, it's been a pretty awful day. Right now, he wants nothing more than to get home, shower for three hours and maybe convince Annie to curl up under the covers with him if she's home but there's a mewl from behind a dumpster that stops him in his tracks.

Sopping as he is, Armin pauses.

It's a cat, he notices, black and grey fur matted and dripping with rain, collarless and all alone in a dark and shady alley. She doesn't look much older than a couple of months old.

"Hey," he greets gently. "Hey there, little cat. Are you lost? Come here..." He reaches for her, but she hisses at him and backs away.

Armin falters. "It's okay," he says after a moment. "I won't hurt you." He shrugs off his jacket and scoops her up before she can get any further. He feels her claws dig through the fabric and her tiny legs try to kick at his arms, but he holds her to his chest, firm but gentle. It's an alley in the middle of a street full of warehouses and Armin glances at kitten and at the surrounding buildings and back again before he lets out a sigh. "You don't belong around here, do you?" he asks.

She mewls again, and Armin adjusts his grip to better support her bottom.

"Well we can't leave you out here." He checks his watch and grimaces: it's six-thirty in the evening. The nearest shelter is forever away and there's no way it's still open now, let alone in the hour it'll take to get home and then drive there. He looks down again and finds she's staring at him through huge green eyes, and what resolve Armin had to begin with caves the longer he looks. "You wanna stay at ours?" he asks at last.

She mewls a third time.

Armin hopes Annie won't mind.

x

It's seven o'clock when he lets himself inside. He can hear Annie doing the dishes in the kitchen, and she's grumbling over a tinny voice that makes Armin think she's got her laptop on the bench with a lecture streaming from it at the same time. The kitten is still bundled up in his jacket. He wonders if he can make it to the laundry without her noticing, but he gets all of two steps inside when he hears the lecture pause.

"Hey," calls Annie.

For a moment, Armin thinks she might come out of the kitchen, and he panics for a second wondering what on earth he should do with the cat. She doesn't though, and he clears his throat. "Hey," he calls back. "It's pouring out there."

"I noticed," deadpans Annie. He can hear the amusement in her voice. "You should have called. I could have come and get you."

"Nah, it was fine," he says, slipping past the kitchen door. "The walk was nice. Not ideal, but it took my mind off things." He takes the jacket from the kitten, tossing it into the hamper and replacing it with a towel from the cupboard above the washing machine.

There's a _hmph_ from down the hall. "Would have stopped you from dripping all over the floor though," says Annie. "Besides, it wou –" she stops, and Armin realizes too late that she must have followed him because he turns and finds that she's staring at the little bundle of fur in his arms.

"Is that a cat?"

He coughs. "You look really pretty today."

"Armin."

"No, really, you look really good with your hair like that –"

" _Armin."_

"I found her by a dumpster, okay?" He clutches the tiny lump a little tighter and she mewls in his arms. "I couldn't leave her there, I mean look at her!"

Annie makes a face at him and crosses her arms in front of her chest. "So what, you brought her home instead of taking her to a shelter?"

"There aren't any open now," defends Armin. "C'mon, Annie, just a couple of nights. Let her recover and stuff and then I'll take her to the nearest shelter on Monday. Please?" He puts on a face he knows she'll try her damndest to resist, but he amps it up and holds up the kitten too. "You don't seriously want me to put her back out in the rain, do you?"

"No," she grumbles. "But I'm still not happy about it." She huffs. "You know we're not allowed pets here."

"I wasn't intending on keeping her," he says defensively. "Just for this weekend, I swear."

Annie rolls her eyes. "Whatever," she says at last. "Two nights. That's it. I'm not taking any responsibility for her and I'm not dealing with it if the landlord finds out you're keeping a cat here." She shakes her head at him and turns away, clearly uninterested in discussing this anymore.

Armin makes a face and looks down at the kitten. "I know," he says. "But she'll grow on you. And I think you'll grow on her too. Just you wait."

* * *

 **Some notes:  
**

JESUS OKAY, so I may have spent a large portion of my day on here today looking for works with short chapters and full of fluff and DO YOU GUYS KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO FIND FLUFF FOR _ANY_ PAIRING IN THIS FANDOM? THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. I WON'T HAVE IT. HAVE SOME GODDAMN ARUANI FLUFF.


	2. I: House of Cards

_I. House of Cards  
_

x

It's a stupid idea, Annie thinks, and there are a plethora of reasons she should _not_ have let Armin keep the cat. _Two nights_ , he had said, but she is ninety percent sure he will have named it by tomorrow night, and bought a proper bed, litter box and scratching post by the night after that. _Two nights_ means forever, and she knows this, and it is a disaster waiting to happen. There will be vaccines and deworming tablets and flea treatments to consider; food and litter to buy every week; the landlord will most certainly not be happy with this –

It's not that Annie dislikes cats, or the idea of having one. It's that they are poor college students and cats are fucking _expensive_ to raise.

There's a mewl at her feet, and Annie peers under the plate and dishcloth in her hands to scowl at the kitten pawing at her leg. "What?" she snaps. "He's gone to get you food already, what else do you want?"

She blinks at her through wide green eyes and mewls again.

Annie huffs. "Don't think you've got me fooled," she mutters, turning back to the sink. "You think you're so cute, don't you?"

 _Meow._

"Yeah. No." She snorts. "Just because you've got Armin wrapped around your stupidly fuzzy paws, doesn't mean you'll get me too. I know what you're up to. I'm not falling for it."

 _Meow._

"Shut up."

x

It's eight thirty when Annie sets her laptop up on the couch and puts the kettle on to boil. It's still pouring outside, and while she'd offered for Armin to take her car to the store, he'd refused because " _it's only a couple of blocks away, Annie, it'll be fine_."

She imagines he'll probably come down with something on Monday.

The kitten trots along behind her, climbing into open cupboards with clumsy little legs and sniffing at _everything_ she has access to, and at last, Annie lets out a frustrated sigh and hoists the stupid thing off the floor. "Bloody cat," she grumbles, padding into the laundry again and setting her on top of the washing machine. "Stay. For one second. Jesus."

The kitten mewls and blinks at her.

Annie scowls. She fashions a makeshift bed for her out of a shoe box and some towels she'd tossed into the dryer, and even goes as far as filling a hot water bottle to keep the whole little set up warm. It's a surprising amount of effort for a cat she doesn't even want to keep, so no one can say she doesn't _try_ to be hospitable.

"Happy?" she asks, dropping the kitten into the pile of towels.

The cat mews contentedly, and Annie assumes that this must mean 'yes', so she nods, satisfied with her handiwork and heads back into the lounge.

She gets all of ten minutes of peace while she codes when something scrambles onto the edge of the couch.

Annie groans. "For fuck's sake," she grumbles. "I am making an effort for you, the least you could do is leave me alone."

The kitten meows mildly and climbs onto her lap.

" _No_ ," snaps Annie, hoisting her up around the middle and placing her back onto the floor.

This, apparently, means nothing to the kitten, because she blinks at her twice before she scrambles onto the couch again and back onto Annie's lap. She kneads her paws on Annie's thighs and curls into a tight little ball of fluff with a contented purr.

 _"_ Get off," hisses Annie, but the cat snuggles into her rather determinedly. She purrs like a tank, and she's far too small and far too delicate to just shove off her lap and onto the floor. She watches Annie through her stupidly wide eyes, looking almost too innocent and trusting for a cat that Armin found behind a dumpster.

Annie bites back a scowl. "That's not going to work on me," she says loudly, fixing a pointed glare at her laptop screen. "I made you a bed and everything! _Get_ _off!"_

But the stupid thing lets out the _tiniest_ _mewl_ _ever_ and Annie's resolve crumbles like a house of cards by an open window.

"I hate you."

 _Meow._

"This isn't winning me over."

The kitten stares up at her with her dumb green eyes like she knows that's not true and Annie caves because it isn't. She'll still ask Armin to take her to a shelter come Monday, but when push comes to shove and Armin begs to let them keep her, she knows that she won't have it in her to refuse.

Well. Fuck.

x

"She seems to like you," Armin teases when he lets himself back in and spots the cat curled up in her lap. "Did you think of a name?"

"We're not keeping her, you know," says, but she rubs the cat's ears idly as she tests her lines of code. She purses her lips. "Ada," she says at last. "Ada Lovelace. What do you think?"

Armin's face splits into a wide, eager grin, and Annie lets out a resigned sigh.

This is one hundred percent a disaster waiting to happen.

* * *

 **Some notes:** CAN'T STOP, WON'T STOP.


	3. II: Bell and Collar

_II. Bell and Collar_

x

Before she went to bed last night, Annie had gone through the trouble of putting Ada in the little bed she had made her and waited until the kitten was purring and sound asleep before she settled in herself. Armin knows this because she had climbed under the covers with him half an hour later grumbling under her breath about how " _the stupid cat won't leave me the fuck alone"_. He had laughed at her, kissed her nose, and held her close until they both fell asleep.

When he wakes the next morning, he has to physically stifle the snort that comes out of his mouth because Annie has shuffled away from him in her sleep and has her arms tucked around a ball of fur. Evidently, Ada doesn't like sleeping alone and, in the twelve hours since he'd brought her home, has already convinced his girlfriend that she's worth keeping. He grins. Annie can pretend they won't keep her as long as she likes, but he knows her well enough now to know that she has already lost the battle. She had named her after all.

Armin lets out a chuckle, placing a gentle kiss against Annie's hair before climbing carefully out of bed to start breakfast.

He's only just cracked eggs into the frying pan when a startled yelp echoes through their apartment, and Annie storms out of their bedroom with a sleepy Ada in her arms.

x

Barring Annie, Armin doesn't see his friends from high school very often. Mikasa and Eren live forty-five minutes south in the dorms of the University of Maria's Shiganshina campus. Marco is at college overseas. Jean is doing an apprenticeship at a four star restaurant in Stohess. Connie has taken a year off to travel. Sasha lives an hour north and commutes all the way to the Trost for vet school, so even though he and Annie have classes at the same campus, their lack of overlapping schedules means that they don't even see her for months at a time.

It makes catching up with each other close to impossible, and if Mikasa doesn't remember to check in once a month, he imagines the majority of their interaction would be through comments and likes on Facebook statuses.

She calls to say hi at half past ten.

 _"You brought home a_ what _?"_

"You sound like Annie," mutters Armin. "I found her in an alley full of warehouses, okay? It was pouring, the shelter was closed, she's tiny – what was I supposed to do?"

" _Are you even allowed cats in your apartment?"_

Armin makes a face and fiddles with his phone charger. "Who's gonna know?" he asks defensively.

He hears Mikasa sigh. _"How does Annie feel about this?"_

"She thinks we're not keeping her, but she named her." Armin snorts to himself. "After Ada Lovelace too. And she calls _me_ a nerd."

 _"You're both nerds,"_ says Mikasa flatly, although the amusement in her voice is obvious. _"You know cats are expensive though, don't you? It's not just food and litter – she'll need to go the vet every couple of weeks for a while to make sure she's gaining weight properly and for vaccines and things."_

Armin grimaces. "We'll be okay, I think. Annie and I aren't particularly high maintenance, so it's not like we spend much on things that aren't groceries or rent. We just have to find a vet that's cheap."

Mikasa pauses. _"What about Sasha?_ " she asks after a moment. _"She works part time at a clinic in Trost as part of her work experience. I bet you she could pull some strings."_

Bless Mikasa for keeping tabs on everyone after high school.

"That's a great idea!" says Armin, brightening a little. He eyes Annie over the counter and offers her an apologetic grin as she tries to get cat fur off her work pants. "Hey, sorry to have to bail on you, but I gotta drive Annie to work. Thanks though! I'll call Sasha tonight."

 _"Mmhm._ " Mikasa chuckles a little. _"Say hi to Annie from me and Eren."_

"I will," he tells her. "Thanks again. Catch up properly soon, yeah?" He smiles at Annie as he hangs up, watching as she chases Ada out of her purse. "Mikasa says hi."

x

Annie gets a ride home with a friend later that night, and when she lets herself in, the first thing she does is make a beeline for Ada. "Sorry I'm late," she says absently, fishing around in her purse for a moment. "Mina offered to drive me but we dropped by the grocers on our way back."

Armin shrugs. "You made good time," he says, pecking her cheek fondly. "Dinner's almost ready."

"Awesome, I'm _starving._ " She offers him a grateful smile. "Wait, don't move yet. I need you to keep hold of Ada."

Armin raises an eyebrow at her, but she pulls a paper bag out of her purse a moment later, and he can't help but grin in understanding as she tugs a tag off a brand new bell and collar.

"This is just so we can hear her when she runs around like an idiot," says Annie stubbornly. "We're still not keeping her."

Armin snorts loudly and ducks when she tries to swat him.

* * *

 **Some notes:  
**

I have so much ammo for this fic, you guys don't even know. Feedback is appreciated as always.


	4. III: Shcroedinger's Cat

_III. Schroedinger's Cat_

Technically speaking, Sasha is only a veterinary _assistant_ , so she shouldn't _really_ be doing anything unsupervised, but the clinic she's doing her internship at is small and semi-rural and run by only two actual veterinarians who are short-staffed so often that they have taught her how to do ninety-percent of the procedures on her own. Usually the clinic is closed on Sundays, but when Armin calls about a kitten, she clears her schedule on the spot because one) she hasn't seen Armin or Annie in months, and two) she _really_ wants to meet this kitten.

She gets to the clinic at around nine to set everything up, and fiddles around with her notes until the bell at the door rings. She looks up, spotting Armin holding the door open for Annie who's got a kitten cuddled to her chest and a tiny scowl on her face.

Sasha lets out a laugh. "Cut the crap, Annie," she teases. "You're holding a kitten, there's no way you're actually annoyed about it."

Annie makes a face. "This isn't a kitten, it's a demon," she grumbles, but she greets Sasha with a smile anyway. "How've you been?"

Sasha shrugs. "Same as always," she says, grinning back. "And you guys?"

"Pretty good," offers Armin. He takes the cat from Annie and hands her over. "You wanted to meet Ada?"

Sasha grins wider and takes her eagerly. "Hello fuzzy!" she greets, giving Ada's ears a gentle scratch. "Hello! Look at you! Aren't you gorgeous?"

"No," mutters Annie under her breath, and Sasha glances at her to find that she's nursing _four_ different scratches on her arms and one that's actually bleeding on her collar. Armin has them all over his hands too.

She laughs. "She got you guys good, huh?" She motions for them to follow her into the back room and sets Ada on the scales. "She's young. She doesn't have a lot of control over her claws yet, but it'll get better with time. You didn't have a carrier or something for the ride here?"

Annie huffs. "No," she says. "We're not really intending on keeping her anyway."

Sasha pauses and eyes the collar around Ada's neck. "Really."

"Armin's going to take her to the shelter tomorrow. _Aren't you_?" Annie eyes her boyfriend sternly. "We just wanted to make sure she was healthy."

"Uh… huh." Sasha clucks her tongue and catches Armin's eye.

He gives a tiny shake of his head and mouths "We're keeping her. She just doesn't know it yet."

* * *

Ada is really obviously a stray, and Sasha knows this because she is definitely not microchipped, and definitely not de-sexed. She spends the morning doing a bunch of routine things like giving the little cat all her vaccines and deworming tablets, and at last, she digs a carrier box out of a pile of boxes in storage and pops the kitten in. "This'll keep her from scratching you guys on the way back," she tells them. She glances at Annie, who's seated by the door and fiddling with her phone. "But there are a couple of things you should consider."

Armin scratches Ada's ears mildly and nods. "I know we'll have to take her in every now and then to keep her vaccines up to date," he says. "Is there other stuff?"

Sasha nods solemnly. She's a poor college student too, after all. "She needs to be microchipped," she says. "And you should consider de-sexing her."

"De-sexing her?" Armin makes a face. "That sounds both painful and expensive."

"Awkward," corrects Sasha. "She'll get a Cone of Shame to make sure she doesn't screw around with her stitches but it's not painful. It can be kind of pricey though. I reckon one thing at a time – I can get her microchipped and stuff first, and we can handle de-sexing when she's a little older. It's not like there are any boy cats that live around your place, and if you keep her inside, it won't be a problem for a while."

Armin hums thoughtfully. "I think we can run with that. When does she have to come in again?"

"Next fortnight," says Sasha. She pauses. "Y'know, this is all sort of assuming Annie agrees to let you keep her."

"She will," says Armin confidently. "You watch. We'll be back next fortnight."

Sasha lets out a laugh. "I hope so." She boops the kitten's nose. "Keep you paws crossed, huh, Ada?"

* * *

The car ride home is pretty uneventful. Ada's in a box now, so Annie isn't quite so pissed, but she taps against the corners of the box and snorts quietly to herself as Ada tries to catch her fingers through the circular holes its sides.

Armin watches her out of the corner of his eye, grinning to himself as he catches the little smiles that tug at the corners of Annie's lips when she thinks he isn't looking.

Yeah. They'll be back next fortnight.

* * *

 **Some Notes:  
**

 **Sorry for late updates. Stuff got busy. Please actually tell me what you think as well. It's encouragement :P**


	5. IV: White Flag

They take Ada to a shelter on Monday afternoon.

Armin drives because, for some strange, unfathomable reason, Annie seems apprehensive. She drums her fingers on Ada's box like she's nervous about something, and Armin knows it can't be about class or anything because Annie is generally pretty good at staying up to date. No, there's something else bothering her today, and the way she's pretending she's _not_ clutching Ada's box closer to herself than she normally would gives Armin absolutely _no hints_ at what might be going through her head.

"You doing okay, Ann?" he asks, trying to hide his amusement.

She scrunches her nose a little. "Fine," she says. "Let's just get rid of this cat already."

Armin glances at her from the corner of his eye. "Y'know…" he begins slowly. "And I'm just saying, and it's a completely reasonable decision to go with – " he coughs – "we could just turn around and _not_ give Ada away."

"Nope," says Annie quickly. "We're going to the shelter. We're going give her to some nice people who'll find a good home for her. We're going through with this."

Ada mewls, and Annie makes an odd sound in her throat and digs her nails into the box.

"We're giving her up, Armin, no excuses," she says, but her voice is oddly strangled and Armin clutches the wheel tighter in an effort to pretend that he doesn't know she can't go through with it.

"I guess you're right," he says with an exaggerated sigh. "Poor Ada. She's going to miss you."

"No she won't, she's a cat," snaps Annie.

"It could be months before the shelter finds someone she likes as much as you."

She scowls. "Stop talking."

"What if someone terrible adopts her?"

"Armin," she growls. "I know what you're trying to do and it's not gonna work, okay? We can't keep her."

Armin lets out another sigh – less exaggerated this time. "If you say so," he mumbles, although he catches the way she shifts uncomfortably in her seat and pretends not to notice.

* * *

He pretends not to notice the way she hesitates to get out of the car when they pull up at the shelter too.

* * *

They meet a lady in the entrance of the Trost Animal Shelter who greets them with a smile as she finishes a phone call at the front reception. She holds up a finger and mouths an apology, and Armin and Annie take sit themselves down on the chairs against the wall. Annie is fidgeting again, and for Ada's sake, Armin takes the box from her and sets it between his feet.

Ada lets out a tiny meow and, beside him, Annie twitches.

"Sorry about that," says the lady at reception. She gets up and makes her way to them. "I'm Petra," she says, holding a hand out for both of them to shake. "I'm one of the volunteers here. What can I do for you guys?"

Armin offers her a small grin and picks up Ada's box. "We found a stray," he explains. "We were hoping you'd be able to find a home for her."

"Oh?" Petra takes the box from him and peers inside. "Oh, hey there, kitty," she says, grinning at Ada. "Did these nice people look after you?"

Ada mewls cheerfully as Petra scratches her ears and laughs. "You don't want to keep her for yourselves?"

"No," says Annie before Armin can say anything. "We can't take her."

"Naw, that's a shame," Petra says. She closes up Ada's box. "Well. I guess it can't be helped. If you guys wanna follow me, we'll just get you to fill out some paperwork and then we'll find a place for this little girl."

"Ada," corrects Annie without thinking. She pauses. "Um. Yeah. We call her Ada."

Petra chuckles. "That's a pretty name. Let's get Ada settled then, yeah?"

* * *

They follow Petra out the door and out past the enclosures. Armin has to pause a couple of times because a lonely looking daschund in one kennel seemed to like the way he smells, and again because a kelpie on a walk wanted him and Annie to play. At last, Petra lets them into a small office on the other side of the property and motions for them to take a seat across from her desk.

She fiddles around in a filing cabinet for a moment (Annie takes Ada's box back from Armin and holds it rather tightly to her chest) before she pulls out a form and places it in front of them.

"This just standard stuff," she explains. "It's just so we know where she came from, how old she is, etc. If you don't know some of the details because she's a stray, just leave it blank okay? I'll take Ada down to the feline enclosures." She holds her hands out expectantly, but Annie stares at her for a solid minute before she realizes what she wants.

"Oh," she says awkwardly. "Sorry." (Very) reluctantly, she relinquishes the box. "Can we come and say good bye before we leave?"

"Of course," says Petra with a smile. "Ah, and – " She studies Annie but directs her next instruction to Armin. "Don't sign it 'til you've said good bye, okay?"

Armin mouths an 'ah' of understanding and he grins back and nods.

"Cool," says Petra, patting Ada's box gently. "I'll be back in a bit."

* * *

The paperwork is boring, and the entire time Armin is filling it out, Annie is fidgeting in her seat. It's kind of frustrating, really – Armin wishes she would just admit that she doesn't want to go through with this and save them both the trouble – but she wouldn't be Annie if she wasn't so stubborn.

"Well," he says at last, putting his pen down when he finishes. "That's all done. Last chance to back out."

"We're not backing out," says Annie petulantly. "Ada's gonna be fine. Someone who can look after her better than us will adopt her and I'm sure she'll love them as much as she loves us."

Armin shrugs. "If you say so," he says. "But y'know, it's okay to admit you don't want to do this."

There's a pause.

And then Annie opens her mouth but Petra returns before she manages to get anything out.

"Ready to come and say good bye?" she asks.

Annie sighs. "Let's get this over with."

* * *

The walk to the feline enclosure is long, but only because Annie seems to want to drag this out as long as possible. Armin feels kind of bad – surely Petra has other things to do today, but she winks at Armin once and says nothing the whole way there.

Ada seems to have settled in with the other cats just fine, but when Petra lets him and Annie into the pen, the kitten mewls happily and trots over without much of a second thought.

"Hey," greets Annie, and she crouches over and scratches the kitten's ears. "You're gonna stay here, okay? Armin and I have gotta go."

Obviously, this means nothing to Ada, and she purrs and turns her head to give Annie better access.

"See you later, Ada," Annie mumbles. She moves like she's about to get up, but she doesn't and Armin waits with baited breath.

There's a pause.

And then Annie makes an odd, strangled noise in her throat, and she picks up Ada and hugs her to her chest. "I can't do it," she says. "Armin, I can't do it. We can't leave her."

"Oh, thank God." Armin sighs, loud and relieved, and he lets out a laugh and offers Petra an apologetic grin. "Sorry about all this trouble."

Petra grins back. "Not at all," she says. "I have some things that might help you guys out in the long run. Good thing you didn't sign that paperwork, huh?"


End file.
